Love, Et Cetera
by shira syndrome
Summary: Ask Jr. about love, and he'll tell you it's not all it's cracked up to be.


Disclaimer: If only. IF ONLY.

30 kisses theme #13 - _excessive chain_

a/n: Originally I was just entertaining a friend by letting her read the angsty twincest, but then I thought what the hell, why not just post the thing. During the time I wrote it, I intended it to be just brotherhood love, but by the time I finished it I wasn't so sure. Also, this one shot is based off the scene where Albedo returns from his, er, vacation, just before the battle with the Patriarch - however, the dialogue and cues and such have been altered for my own devious purposes, so it's not an exact picture of the - yeah, you get the idea, right? XD

So. Onward!

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**Love, Et Cetera**

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Love – _real_ love – isn't anything like how it's described in his novels. _Real_ love isn't carefree or perfect or able to heal all wounds; hell, half the time it isn't even healthy let alone happy. It's not like a mathematical equation where one variable plus another equals _correct _and everyone can go home happy knowing the prince and princess live happily ever after and gnosis are really made of cotton candy. Nope, sorry, burst bubbles all around, because that isn't even remotely true.

Did a kiss on the cheek and an old promise mean he loved Sakura like a little boy loves a little girl? Did he love the way she lived, or did he love her after she took that life away of her own volition? Or does the remaining emotion for Sakura Mizrahi just extend from fourteen years worth of glorified memories? But it doesn't matter whether he loved her or not; either way it was pretty-love, poetic-love, the vaporous kind born of naivety.

_Real_ love is about bleeding: sweat and tears and pain and pain and more pain, and when you've finally worked through all the smoke and mirrors and masks, you'll be immersed in that love from top to bottom, only to find there's more horseshit to wade through. There always is. It wouldn't be love if you didn't have to work for it.

That's what real love is. Because Jr. knows, and boy oh boy does he know it bad. Real bad. As bad as you could ever want.

And he hates it and loves it and wants to push and wants to pull and sometimes he just wants to yank his hair out by the roots, it makes his head hurt mulling it over so damn much.

This all hits him with the force of a bullet train when he shows up.

Albedo always did like to grab the spotlight and cling to it with both hands, and it's obvious in the way he appears so casually after such an abrupt evanescence, body basking in a purple haze of power like a narcotic strobe light.

(_Typical Albedo fashion_, he thinks, and somewhere deep inside he can't help but smile.)

That piece of himself flapping uselessly in the cold void of separation, the thread drawn between them, cut at the moment of his disappearance, snaps straight, hooks to its twin, snags, and it's like they've never been apart. Relief and anger and warmth and mistrust fill up that empty hole in his heart; sucks it all up like soil starved of water.

Even as messed up and fucked up and bleak as the world is, it resets itself and is right again. Jr.'s throat clenches briefly. For just a second - barely a blink of time - he's no longer Gaignun Kukai Jr. but Rubedo again, back in another time where things made sense and seeing his twin's face didn't make his insides quail.

There's talking but he can't hear a word of it, there's cotton in his ears. He shakes his head to clear it. Takes an instinctive step forward. The gaping maw in the right side of his chest is beating again, beating strong, and he allows himself some selfish relief.

(_After that day, the day things took a turn for the worst and just kept on turning, he eventually forgot to worry that all it would take was a single moment for Albedo to tempt death one time too many, forgot to care that one day he might just be... gone._)

The air crackles with the Zohar's energy. (And irony is what imbues their lives, isn't it?) Albedo falls like the twisted angel he is.

After all he's taken from her, bent her to his will until she was about to snap, beside him MOMO still gasps, hands to her mouth. There is mercy in that sound. Remorse. She, who has known only his sneering derision, his enmity for life, who has never seen his childlike smiles or heard his earnest laughter or rubbed away his fat wet tears... she still cries out as he hits the ground, a motion of grief.

Has he ever made a gesture like that?

He, the one who has seen all those good things and more, doesn't think he has.

He'd do anything for MOMO, the girl who represents that pretty-love with no substance, but it's absurd, isn't it? That he can't say the same for his twin, can't say he'd do anything for Albedo besides put a bullet in his heart, as much as he believes in his own kindness and love for his siblings.

That hurts. (_And it must have hurt him, too, right? Right? It must have hurt him too._)

He moves, brushing past Ziggy's restraining hand. His heart his beating faster than ever, but that second heartbeat, always in the opposite pattern, stumbles in its rhythm.

His feet can't take him there fast enough, Albedo's laughing but it's just not damn funny, and suddenly his brother is fading from the feet up, flesh and bone dissolving, and the bastard's still _laughing_ like everything's goddamn well peachy and and and –

- he reaches out a hand to touch Albedo, needs to feel the solidness of his chest, the heart underneath, his heart, their heart –

- fading and fading, faster and faster –

- Jr. pauses at the last second, hand poised, can't work up the nerve to see if there's anything left, stuck behind the curtain of old wounds and venom –

- and Albedo turns to him, nothing but a talking head (they would have found that funny in another time, had a good laugh over it with their feet dangling off the courtyard wall) and cracks a lame-ass joke, one he's probably been preparing just to see Rubedo roll his eyes skyward in irritation with just a hint of fondness maybe -

- oh god and this time he really is gone, he's gone, and Jr. does breathe deep, just once, something dry and dead in this throat, and _oh god_ that break again, that rip of something soft and tender, that lonely thread floating aimlessly -

He stops, closes his eyes. His hand is still hanging in the air, shaking ever so slightly, and he retracts it, automatically closing his fist as though to grab something and hold on to it. One more deep breath, and damn he'd better suck in those stinging tears before MOMO thinks he's a crybaby.

He has to focus. He can't be distracted. The Original is in control of the Patriarch, leader of everything they stand against, and he's got to hold it together. He has to fight. He has to give it all he has. For MOMO. For Juli. For Gaignun and Shion and everyone else.

(_And maybe that's why they missed more than they hit, why they couldn't keep hold no matter their outstretched hands, maybe it was his fault, all his fault, because he never gave him all he had, never shared enough of himself._

_"But you promised! You promised me you'd help!"_

_"Ah, I know, I know! But I'm supposed to meet Sakura - I'm already late! C'mon, gimme a break Albedo, can't you ask someone else?"_

_"... Fine. Go. I don't care."_

_"Don't be like tha -"_

_"I said I don't care. Go!"_)

And he stands up and feels the solid weight of his pistol under his hand. Cool metal to ward off the sick heat in his cheeks, pricking tears in his eyes. He has to be calm now. Focussed. Focussed.

He realizes just how bad things could go down; balanced on edge of a blade, and one wrong move could ruin any chance of a lukewarm ending, send everything spiralling into the Abyss and straight to hell.

He knows that; but there's still time to change the outcome.

He realizes real love isn't anything like how it's described in his novels. Real love is about bleeding for it, working for it, crying for it, sacrificing for it. It consumes as it burns, but damn, there's nothing like it in the world, and if you're ever lucky enough to stumble into it, you'd be smart to hold on to it.

Because he knows, and boy oh boy does he know it bad. Real bad. As bad as you could ever want.

And he knows he's realized that far too late.


End file.
